There’s not one-size-fits-all for cover cropping: Exploring farmers’ mindsets on cover crops to inform outreach

Faced with climate change, dwindling resources, and the world’s growing population, agriculture must become more sustainable, efficient, and resilient. Research shows that practices like cover crops can help meet these needs, but their use in the United States remains limited, with only 4.7% of farmed acres utilizing cover crops. Against this backdrop, we used semistructured interviews and Q methodology to explore row crop commodity farmers’ perspectives on cover crops in the US Northeast, Southeast, and Midwest regions. While past research has attempted to identify and isolate factors influencing adoption (i.e., perceived benefits, barriers, and motivations), this project investigates farmers’ holistic perspectives on cover crops by grounding their decision to adopt (or not) in their overall view of commodity agriculture. Our analysis reveals 14 distinct mindsets across the three US regions, with points of convergence suggesting that some viewpoints extend beyond regional boundaries. Importantly, this work finds that different perspectives on cover crops span both adopters and nonadopters in the same regions, demonstrating that adoption is not itself a mindset and highlighting why “one-size-fits-all” outreach efforts have failed to generate higher implementation rates. By investigating farmers’ mindsets on cover crops, this research provides much-needed information for outreach targeted to farmers’ needs, beliefs, and priorities, thus supporting increased and successful cover crop adoption across the country.